Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  On the wooden table by the window in his room, he keeps three straw baskets. One is for figs. He is perhaps too fond of them, but he cannot help himself. In another he keeps pieces of broken bread—for birds mostly but also as a token of his calling. In a third, he keeps letters. Today there are several waiting to be posted:

  Dear Winston,

  Thank you for your most recent letter and the splendid photographs of Miriam and Christiana and Thomas. Give my kisses to each of them.

  One photo of your good self struck me as indicative of significant changes in your life. It displayed “a trans-cultural event of epic proportions”. Is that really you, grinning, with a hunting rifle in your hands, standing among a cohort of hunters? Truly, Winston, this worries me, since it appears that you are telling me something with the image. Here in Croatia the image of a gun functions in an entirely different way from in America’s woodlands. Are you hunting deer? And what will you do if you find yourself aiming your rifle at a white stag with a crucifix in his antlers? Will you be surprised if he speaks to you?

  I asked myself, is my dear friend becoming assimilated? What is it I see with my own eyes, a red cap, a fluorescent orange vest, a rifle with what looks like a telescope attached to it? Will he attempt to shoot Andromeda or Pegasus? What has become of his real telescope, the one through which he watches the stars and ponders infinity? Has he become a golfer? Does he host neighborhood barbecues? This is not an accusation. I merely inquire.

  Of course, I am teasing you. I laugh and laugh and laugh because I see the joke you send me in this picture. You are in disguise. You are in cultural camouflage. You will offer poisoned tea (which is not really poisoned) to your fellows in the hunting party and thus shake their perceptions a little, an avocation you have often pursued with me and with others. You would not hurt the tiniest sparrow—not because you are a recidivist Hindu, but because you are so sensitive to death entering the world, as is your beloved bride, and thus you do not wish to reduce the number of living symbols in our existential spectrum.

  Do not repeat the above to your hearty companions. My words would not fail to sound like something very different from what they are. I am not against guns. The people of my birthplace might have survived if they had had enough guns to defend themselves. If your children were hungry, you would shoot the great white stag without a moment’s hesitation, and you would be entirely correct to do so. And so would I shoot it, if I were starving. I have rediscovered my taste for mutton and prosciutto, though rarely can I afford it.

  What am I saying to you? Perhaps it is only this: man does not look deeply at the world. He lives by habit and pleasure and impulse. He does not read the poetry in things. And so I say, if he must kill a creature, that is his right, but he should see its beauty before taking its life and understand its presence as language. Moreover, he must understand that blindness to the miraculousness of existence makes it easier for him to pull a trigger and end a human life. Do I exaggerate? We both know the 170 million answers to this.

  Salutations to you, singular friend,

  Josip

  My dear Christiana,

  How delighted I was to receive your letter so full of good news about your studies. I understand how torn you feel at this time of your life, for youth is a stage when we leave childhood behind and are not yet fully adults. You have wings but have not yet flown!

  What you tell me about your two desires does not in the least disturb me. In truth, they both make me more happy than you can imagine. You wish to raise horses, you say! And you wish to try your vocation as a religious sister. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that somewhere in the world there may be a convent that has a stable full of horses? This is farfetched, I admit.

  I have placed the drawing you made of the white horse on the wall of my room. I look at it frequently. When I was young, I once rode a white horse. That was the only time I have ridden on a horse. Will you believe me when I say that he spoke to me and made me a promise? It is true. I will tell you about that another day.

  For now, my goddaughter, I enclose this simple and rather amateurish poem, and I hope you like the little gift I send with it. This carving of a white horse was made by an elderly woman who sells such marvels in the market only a few blocks away from my home here in Split. She lives in a stone hut on an island, and she comes to the city by boat. Her name is Kristijana—the same as yours, in Croatian. That is a nice coincidence, isn’t it? Life is strange. You learn something new every day.

  My love and prayers for you, always.

  —your Josip

  WHITE HORSE

  Beauteous is the filly and full of fire,

  who dances on the fields of green and plunges

  underneath the bower, heedless of the snare or hour.

  Before the wind she flies, tossing head and heel,

  prancing high and headlong free the pulsing choreography

  equestrian jig and reel.

  Her master sees the fire and loving well that light,

  He knows how swift extinguishes the blaze of youthful life,

  for leaping where the wind would take, as impulsed as a storm,

  she flings her future here and there,

  heedless that a filly will be

  more beauteous when a mare.

  The bit is cold and hard in mouth, she cries and clamps the steel;

  it seems the end of all the dance, no more than this can feel,

  the anger-embers in the heart ignite to fury race,

  but He who knows her better still, commands a measured pace.

  He sees ahead the leap that breaks and ends the ardent zeal,

  He will not let her bound the fence that boundaries her reel.

  Yearling on the fields of light, in seer and sacred green,

  races cross the heaving land in bridle strap a queen.

  Over ditch and hedgerow now, she leaps without a fault

  the water-race and brindle bush and flamed foxy path,

  the thorny brake and stony wall and heedless human wrath.

  The steeplechase is long and far and tumbles riders down,

  bit-broke now, the yearling-mare runs onward to her crown.

  Dear Caleb,

  Thank you so much for sending me your latest book. It is ever encouraging for me to see a man of your generation resisting the “zeitgeist literary Nazis”, as you once called them. And it seems that you have discovered a parallel truth: zeitgeist literary Communists are an alternative danger, as are the proponents of any other collectivist ideas that present themselves to the mind as solutions to “the problem of man”. I include in this category the new globalist’s models of what is now called universal “governance”. As all ideologues do, they offer us superficial either/or choices. Supposedly, one must choose between war and world government. They do not understand that globalism will not change the fundamental human condition. Globalism is ultra-nationalism expanded to a planetary scale, without the safety measures of cultural and religious diversity. Believe me, world-shapers (rather, world-reshapers) are long familiar to those of us who have lived through political experiments. Claiming my rights, I dare to remind you that beneath their constructs, and even beneath their supposed humanitarianism, you will always find a killer. Presumption and arrogance over mankind brings forth, in time, the fruit of death.

  Oh, I am in a melancholic mood today. But do not be hurt by this, my son. Your new poems lifted my heart greatly. I wish you were here so that we could enjoy a rigorous and satisfying argument.

  Love,

  Josip

  Dear Slavica,

  You asked about the situation here in our homeland. Though the war ended ten years ago, I find myself among a devastated, heroic people. I have met many vital, ingenious individuals striving to build a healthy society—primarily through the restoration and development of culture. However, there is at the same time among our people widespread discouragement. A quarter of a million are missing from my land of birth, Bosnia-Herzegovina, m
urdered by Serbs. As many have been displaced through what our enemy calls “ethnic cleansing”. In occupied Croatia, twenty-five thousand noncombatants were killed. It is rare to meet a Croat and not talk with him about the war—everyone has lost someone.

  Anyone who denies his negative feelings toward our historical enemy is not being honest with himself. Aversion, mistrust, and resentment are all there in the heart, and they do not disappear at will. Our emotions and our spiritual wounds cannot be erased simply from our memories—it is not humanly possible—though we can train ourselves not to act on these emotions. Over and over again, we hear the word “forgiveness”. But how do you forgive someone who does not express remorse and who, moreover, claims to have been the victim in a war that he planned and instigated? In many hearts there is an unspoken cry: When will the justice of God come?

  These and other countless frustrations have led to suicides— more than fifteen hundred veterans have taken their own lives. Here is the cross upon which so many now suffer. Despair or faith—you either go insane, or you turn to Christ for answers and consolation. Then you begin to pray harder, and you also try to pray for the enemy, because you know that God loves him and that it is His holy will that he be saved through your prayers. What does loving one’s enemy mean? If our enemy does not respond to divine mercy and to our own crippled attempts at mercy, if he does not repent, what is to become of him?

  The Serbian people have a saying: “He who avenges himself is sanctified.” The Croatian people say: “He who does not seek vengeance is sanctified.” In the middle of the fighting, in the nineties, our late Cardinal Kuharić spoke these simple but unforgettable words: “If someone has set fire to your house, do not set fire to his.” Indeed, the Serbs destroyed hundreds of Catholic churches in the regions they occupied. For our part, we destroyed not a single Serbian Orthodox church on our lands or elsewhere. In our churches, we hear the repeated exhortation to forgive—to forgive everything. Now I understand that the Holy Spirit is calling us to be Christ among the nations. A sign of contradiction, as we have been for untold generations.

  As we forgive we must not forget, lest history repeat itself. In a spiritual climate such as this one, which is so demanding psychologically and spiritually, and in a social climate that reeks of injustice and corruption, the nation withdraws into the so-called “Croatian silence”, a phenomenon almost continually present in our history because oppression has been continual. It refers primarily to the passivity of leaders and their unwillingness (due to fear or resignation?) to verbalize the thoughts and best desires of the majority. Even so, Slavica, I heard a holy woman once say that when Croatia is silent she is steeped in prayer. I am now convinced that this is true. It is not the prayer of the entire people, but of a sufficient number of genuine and discerning faithful who are the spiritual backbone of the country. As always, it is the hidden sufferers who preserve us.

  Isn’t it a basic truth that we are brought to prayer only by passing through suffering? In this respect, the war was a blessing because it taught this generation how to pray, and it taught us the power of prayer. We learned that it was prayer that preserved us against impossible odds and only prayer that brought us independence. Dare I write these words—O God, how dare I write them?—yet I cannot be silent. The war was a catastrophe, but in Christ the worst catastrophe can be transformed into a blessing. The war renewed awareness of our centuries-old Christian identity and prepared us to be steadfast in these times which, with every passing day, are resembling more and more the end times. Our horrible war taught us “in the flesh” about the Great War that will last until the end of time.

  Despite our heroes, the confusion and ideological invasion continues. Moral erosion pours in from the wealthy materialist nations, and we gasp and swim to keep our heads above the waves, even as many cooperate with it—human nature is the same everywhere. Have we cast off Moscow and Belgrade only to succumb to London, Paris, and Manhattan? We need not succumb, need not become the clone creatures of a globalist social revolution. We are blessed with something unique in our character, but I think we are too close to ourselves—inside of ourselves—to recognize it. While it is true that we must beware the danger of mythologizing our character (the mystification of self-love), there is another danger. That is to fall back into the spirit of resignation, which is thinly disguised despair, allowing our vital energies to be sapped or to lie dormant.

  Why do so many of our people emigrate? Are we fleeing our memories, trying to sever the connection to our most devastating wounds? Are we searching for an earthly paradise, fleeing the challenges of the future, the responsibility that is asked of any human being in this world who hopes to build a family or a nation? Will we retain our colorful decorations and our music and our language in those distant lands of plenty and forget what is in the heart of the soul? And for those who remain here, what will they inherit? Will the young of this generation be able to know themselves?

  Men speak of peace, but they do not know what they mean by it. Is it absence of conflict? Is it passivity and compromise? Is it the peace of the grave, or is it the peace of an active and wise love that doesn’t count the cost?

  Forgive me this disordered letter, I am presently a jumble of questions. I am a man who possesses only fragments, a beggar who wanders into a feast of materialism, offering to the guests a basket of broken bread.

  Christ’s holy peace be with you,

  Josip

  My beloved daughter,

  I realize that this is the fifth letter I have written to you this month, which all too easily could place a burden of reciprocity upon you. Please do not apologize one more time for not replying letter for letter. (As I write this, I am sending you a smile across this wide ocean.) I know how busy your life is. We need never count the quantity of exchange as the measure of its quality.

  I hope that in telling these stories of the life that your mother and I spent together, from the moment we first saw each other until the night of our parting, they will give to your mind (and your heart) a form for what is, in fact, already a part of you. Perhaps they will become nearly visual if I tell them well; perhaps they will become like a happy memory for you.

  You must surely know that it is one of the greatest griefs of my life that I was not there for your birth, that I could not help you learn to walk and speak and love and laugh. To see you grow into a fine young lady and then into a wonderful woman. Yet it seems to me now that even such terrible absences can become a blessing if we do not lose heart, if we keep swimming in the many waters of God’s grace, if we give him time, if we permit a little space for his mercy.

  Now we can fill in small portions of the past for each other, though they are not in essence mere pieces of a puzzle; they are not a problem that must be solved. Are they not more like a work of art, which is always mysterious, always pointing to and revealing something beyond itself?

  For most of my life, I have been a very quiet person—nearly wordless except on paper—and that too has not been great in volume. As I become older (and older and older), it seems to me that a messenger is in his words, if the messenger is truly himself. His life is his primary word, and his spoken words bear his life. He learns to be this when he has discovered that a man can give to others only what he truly is.

  (Oh, now I am speaking too much, my words like a frozen mountain stream unleashed by the spring sun, tumbling down and spreading too thinly as it spills over its banks.)

  Here is a prayer/counsel that I wrote for my own eyes—no other eyes have seen it but yours. I try to live by this instruction to myself:

  Seek nothing for yourself.

  Stand ready to serve

  in quietness,

  demanding nothing,

  expecting nothing,

  sacrificing and praying without anyone knowing.

  Silence

  Silence

  Silence

  This silence before God and man is the presence of being. Such silence speaks! Then when one’s s
poken words flow, they come from the true heart of one’s unique identity. An identity that only the Father in Heaven knows, for it is hidden even from our own eyes.

  Here is an old, anonymous Latin poem I love so much:

  Pauper sum ego.

  Nihil habeo.

  Cor meum dabo.

  (I am a poor man.

  Nothing do I have.

  I will give you my heart.)

  I give you my heart, my Marija,

  Your Tata

  He spends Christmas Eve with his publisher’s family, in a newly built house in a hillside suburb, above a villa where Tito spent his vacations—one of several villas that socialism-with-a-human-face stole from their former owners. The publisher’s bungalow is no villa. It is rather small but big on windows, light from all sides. Below, the tips of cypress trees sway in the wind, and beyond is the open vista of the Adriatic. After supper, Josip sits in an armchair looking at the scene and falls asleep while small children crawl all over him. Later, his publisher drives him back to his apartment—the family is off to Midnight Mass, Josip to his bed. They wish each other a blessed Christmas.

  “Bog, Josip!”

  “Bog, my friend!”

  Alone in his room, Josip sits down at his desk and tries to write a poem about the day. He calls it “Christmas after a Season of Fury” but gets no farther than the title and a few phrases before he falls asleep. In the morning he cannot recapture the inspiration.

  At the morning Christmas Mass, which is celebrated by the archbishop, Josip kneels near the tomb of St. Domnius, his forehead on his arms, arms on the chair-back in front of him. He is praying his thanksgiving after receiving Communion. He feels the peace, as he does most days. Yet he is also missing his family in New York, Marija and Ryan, Caleb and Jefferson, and his other family, gone these many years. In a word, he is lonely. Not unpeaceful, but still—lonely. He does not mind, for it is a familiar feeling. He unites it to the loneliness of Christ. There are no thoughts or images in his mind.